I have been reading several books on the practice of psychotherapy this week, and have been struck by how the changes in that field parallel those in the university. In both, there is a good deal of cheerleading about increasing ‘diversity’ and access by the ‘marginalized’ which masks the ever greater encroachment of external corporate …
“Higher Virtue isn’t virtuous/ thus it possesses virtue/ Lower Virtue isn’t without virtue/ thus it possesses no virtue/ Higher Virtue involves no effort or the thought of effort/ Higher Kindness involves effort/ but not the thought of effort/ Higher Justice involves effort/ and the thought of effort/ Higher Ritual involves effort/ and should it meet …
The term ‘synchronicity’ was coined by the psychologist Carl Jung to designate a relation between events that is both (i) explanatory and (ii) non-causal.[1] Consider the events x, in which a is F, and y, in which b is G. According to Jung’s terminology x and y would be synchronous, if a’s being F explained …
I recently read Philip Goff’s delightful little manifesto for panpsychism, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. Goff wrote this work for the non-specialist and admirably condenses the key debates in the analytic philosophy of mind to their essentials. He does this to explain and motivate an emerging position which would have been …
“Falling Towers/ Jerusalem Athens Alexandria/ Vienna London/ Unreal”—T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland. The Tower has the reputation of being one of the most ominous cards in the tarot. In Rider-Waite-Smith iconography, the card depicts a stone tower ablaze, its crown struck down and two of its inhabitants plummeting from its desolate heights. The card’s black background …
As noted in my previous post, the Buddha is said to have articulated a middle path between the extremes of sensual indulgence and extreme asceticism. Rather than abandoning oneself to lower pleasures or mortifying one’s body by starving the flesh, Buddhists practice tranquil meditation. Advocates of the Buddha’s middle way claim that “It gives vision, …